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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
World
Caroline Mortimer

Paris attacks: Mother died using her body to shield her five-year-old son from bullets

A five-year-old boy survived the massacre in Paris's Bataclan theatre after he was sheltered from the bullets by the body of his dead mother. 

Louis had been attending the Eagles of Death Metal concert with his mother Elsa Delplace, 35, and his grandmother Patricia San Martin, 61, when it was attacked by terrorist gunmen. 

Ms Delplace and Ms San Martin were both shot dead as they tried to protect him - leaving him covered in blood. 

In a tribute to Ms Delplace in Le Point magazine, her friend Sihem Souid wrote: "Elsa Delplace and her mother Patricia died on Friday under a hail of bullets inside the Bataclan. 

"Her son Louis, her ray of sunshine, was with her. Louis was found in Vincennes hospital, distraught and covered in his mother's blood as she tried to protect him from the bullets. 

"Elsa was a joyous person who always had a smile on her lips, even at difficult times. She was involved in the voluntary, cultural and artistic worlds. She played the cello brilliantly. 

"She always fought against injustice. I think it was part of her family - her Chilean mother fled the dictatorship of Pinochet."

Eighty-nine people died in the Bataclan theatre on Friday night when gunman opened fire on the packed rock concert before detonating suicide vests.

A further 40 people were killed in co-ordinated attacks across the city in several restaurants and outside the Stade de France football stadium. 

Tributes have flooded in for all the victims of the attacks. 

In a Facebook post, French journalist Antoine Leiris, whose wife Hélène Muyal-Leiris also died in the Bataclan attack, said "you will not have my hatred".

He said: "I don’t know who you are and I don’t want to know, you are dead souls. If this God for whom you kill blindly made us in his image, every bullet in the body of my wife is a wound in his heart.

"So no, I will not give you the satisfaction of hating you. You want it, but to respond to hatred with anger would be to give in to the same ignorance that made you what you are."

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